City Councilmember Zac Blanchard told the January BHCA meeting that council members will be discussing changes to the bill, which he supports. As written, the bill would make it easier for investors and residential building owners to acquire and cut up single-family properties into as many as four units without neighborhood or city intervention.
There’s been much discussion in the BHCA about the Housing Options and Opportunities Act (SB 25-0066), under consideration by the city council. The bill would effectively end single-family zoning across Baltimore, allowing duplexes and other multi-family homes everywhere in Baltimore. While the full impact of this change is still unknown, I believe the bill would help address the significant quality-housing shortage we have in Baltimore by removing restrictions that have prevented densification and construction of new housing in the places where people want to live.
The City Council has passed four of the five housing bills on this year’s agenda, and the fifth is likely to pass this week or next. One of these bills doesn’t affect us, two are good, and two are likely to cause trouble in the coming years.
BHCA President Lee Tawney named Beth Brenner, Jeff Thompson, Charlie Duff, Davin Hong and Sallye Perrin to a neighborhood State Center Working Group to keep tabs on the sometimes confusing and conflicting plans for the soon-empty campus of public buildings just south of Bolton Hill.
The City Council is considering a package of five bills related to zoning for housing. The Land Use Committee of the BHCA has studied them pretty deeply, and the association board adopted a resolution that has been sent to the Baltimore City Planning Commission and our elected officials.
Let’s say you were a young Bolton Hill couple expecting a baby when plans to reconstruct Druid Lake first came into view. By now, if all went to plan, your child could be about to finish college.
A set of five city council zoning bills was introduced this spring as the Housing Options and Opportunity Act. City agencies are studying them before sharing their recommendations with city council, which will then hold public hearings this fall. City council would have to vote on the bills by the end of the year to prevent them from expiring with this year’s legislative session.
The city’s long-awaited, streamlined e-permitting system, kicked off in February to make it easier and faster for homeowners and builders to get construction permits, is a flop, a survey by the Baltimore Banner illustrated this month. In Bolton Hill, the number of permits issued during the first half of 2025 plunged by more than 100 percent over last year.
The city’s Board of Estimates will meet and presumably approve the reinstatement of Midtown Community Business District on Tuesday, June 20, the last step in rectifying a screwup by the city council last year that cast a legal cloud over the special district’s legitimacy.
Voters in Bolton Hill and three other neighborhoods making up Midtown, the special tax district, have voted by more than a two-to-one margin to keep the community service district operating. While the final vote is expected to be released and certified by the city comptroller’s office on April 18, Midtown officials shared unofficial results.
